


in the light of a dying star

by Areiton



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aromantic Bucky Barnes, Awesome Pepper Potts, Because Fuck Canon That's Why, Everyone Needs A Hug, Extremis, F/M, Fix It Fic, Getting Together, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, M/M, Open Relationships, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Protective Bucky Barnes, Protective Peter Parker, Protective Tony Stark, it's happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-26 22:49:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18726424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton
Summary: Extremis isn't a guarantee. That's what Pepper told him, as they took him off the bloody, dusty field.It was just achance. A desperate gamble.An Engame Fix It





	in the light of a dying star

**Author's Note:**

> What is says on the tin. We all need a fix it and this is my meager contribution to that.

When he was eight, Uncle Ben took him to a cabin up on the edge of America, near the Candian border. He spent a week there drowning in hot chocolate and burnt hot dogs, fishing in the morning and swimming in the lake in the afternoon, long twilight nights chasing fireflies in the twilight.

He hasn’t been back, not since then. Not since before the spider-bite and the mugger and the funeral.

Not since before Mr. Stark and everything that came with him.

“It’ll be a good place for him to rest,” Peter says.

_ It’ll be a good place for us to hide _ , he means.

Pepper nods, and he still doesn’t quite know what to make of her—of the way she watches him, and talks about the long years he was gone. He doesn’t know quite what to do with the way she squeezes his hand and murmurs, “Take care of him.”

He only knows this—he is in a quinnjet and Bucky is flying it, and Tony is in the Cradle, attended to by Helen Cho, and they’re going to a cabin he remembers being happy at.

 

~*~

 

He should have died.

There on the battlefield, his entire right side burnt black, his skin reeking of smoke and charred meat—the scent of meat cooking makes Peter gag, now—his eyes afraid as he watched Peter.

He should have died.

Peter thought he would.

He  _ did _ , for a moment, before FRIDAY sent a pulse of electricity straight to his heart and Pepper slammed an injection of something bright and orange into his thigh and snapped at Rhodey to  _ move him. _

He did die.

And Pepper refused to accept that, just like Tony refused to accept Peter’s death, and maybe they were cheating—but he looks at Tony in the Cradle, Extremis working to piece him together, and thinks—he doesn’t  _ care.  _ He will cheat and steal and beg and borrow, whatever the hell it takes, to keep Tony breathing and with him.

With them.

 

~*~ 

The cabin has been cleaned and stocked and prepared for a gravely injured man to convalesce. Peter barely notices as he and Bucky maneuver the Cradle in, and Tony sleeps on, unaware. He only realizes it when he walks through, after fussing over Tony and the room and the power supply and finally being snapped at by FRIDAY. He retreats, but leaves the door ajar. She’ll tell him if there are any changes.

Bucky is in the kitchen, poking at the groceries, and Peter studies him. When Pepper said he needed to take Tony somewhere safe, he hadn’t imagined the former assassin would  _ want  _ to come. But he came back alone, no Steve, no Sam, and no word of explanation—just offered to go and watch their backs.

The world changed, and he wasn’t going to turn down extra protection, certainly not when Mr. Stark was so vulnerable. Bucky came along.

“Did you get your room?” he asks, tired and Bucky shakes his head.

“You first,” he says, simply and Peter would argue—but he’s too tired for that. He nods and grabs an apple, before stumbling into the first bedroom and collapsing face first into the mattress.

“FRI,” he mumbles.

“Sleep, Peter. I’ll wake you if there’s any change,” she soothes and he let’s the promise be enough.  

 

~*~

 

Tony doesn’t wake up at all the first month. 

Peter answers Pepper’s calls, steps aside to let Rhodey in when he comes by, and immerses himself in everything he missed in the past five years. 

Bucky walks with him in the evenings, FRIDAY in his ear and fireflies come out to play, dance around in a swarm and he doesn’t want to ever leave. 

“Why did you come with us?” he asks, and Bucky shrugs. 

“There was no where else to go,” he says, and Peter squeezes his hand. 

 

~*~

 

Extremis and the Cradle have a lot of work to do. Pepper won’t even tell Morgan he’s alive, just redirects the little girl and says it’s better. 

Better not to get her hopes up, better to let time tell the story. 

He sits next to Mr. Stark’s bed, staring at the damage the gauntlet did--and wonders if she was right. 

If this can even be fixed. 

Except--he was gone for five  _ years.  _ And Tony fixed it. Tony brought him home, brough the whole universe back to life. 

So he believed. He sat next to Tony and watched Extremis move under his skin and the Cradle regrow his arm, and he believed. 

 

~*~

 

“Do you ever think about it?” 

Bucky looks at him. 

"Do you?" 

Peter pulls another handful of grass and twists it til it stains his fingers green. "No. But I think it was different for me? Dr. Strange said others knew, how long they'd been there. For me--it was just seconds." 

He let's the ruined grass fall from his fingers. "But I remember how much it hurt," he confesses. "Dying? I remember that. And I remember begging Mr. Stark to make it stop." 

He closes his eyes, remembering that day on Titan so long ago. 

It feels so recent that he shivers. He can still taste the metallic air and the dust caught on his lips as he shattered into nothing. 

"I remember," Bucky says.

Peter looks at him, and the assassin draws him close, and hooks the flower crown he's been weaving onto Peter's head. 

"It was lonely. But quiet. Empty. I wasn't cold, and I wasn't being asked to kill anyone, and no one was hurting me," he says, softly. "It was almost peaceful." 

He looks, for a moment, sad. Like he  _ misses _ it. 

Peter's heart aches, because what kind of horrible life did he have, that longing for death and the Soul Realm seemed  _ better _ . 

He doesn't ask, and Bucky smiles for him, but it's shadowed and tired, and Peter thinks that maybe Tony isn't the only one here who needs to heal. 

They go back to the cabin and Peter waits, waits until the sun has dropped and night has settled and then knocks gently on his door. 

"Can I read with you?" he asks, and Bucky looks at him, surprise in his storm grey eyes. "I'll be quiet. I just--I don't like being alone." 

Bucky doesn't quite smile. But he does nod. 

 

~*~

 

Extremis isn't a guarantee. That's what Pepper told him, as they took him off the bloody, dusty field. 

It was just a  _ chance _ . A desperate gamble. 

"It could change him," she warned him. 

It's part of why she stayed away, far enough that Tony couldn't hurt her and Morgan, if he  _ did _ change. 

It's part of why Peter stayed close. Because no matter what he did, Tony couldn't hurt him, not enough to do serious damage, without killing him. 

Pepper looked worried when she said that, but Peter wasn't. 

This was Tony Stark, the man who held him while he died, and rewrote time to bring him back, and there was nothing in the universe that could convince Peter Tony would ever voluntarily hurt him. 

But sometimes--

Sometimes he reads the extensive reports FRIDAY complied on Extremis, and his gut churns, and he looks at Bucky, fear bright in his eyes. "What if he is different?" he asks. 

Bucky slides his tea across the counter to Peter and leans back against the counter. He's wearing loose sweatpants and his feet are bare and his hair is a loose bun at the back of his head and he looks--happy, almost. 

Peter likes it. Likes that Bucky is happy here, with them. 

"We were," he says, and Peter blinks. "Dying does that to a person, Pete. You know that. He's going to be different because you don't walk away from what Tony did without being a little different." 

Peter makes a low, hurt noise in his throat and Bucky smiles at him. Steps into his space and says, softly. "But different doesn't mean broken, and it doesn't mean how he feels about you is going to change." 

 

~*~

 

Peter deliberately doesn't allow himself to think about  _ how _ Tony feels about him, and why the thought of that makes his stomach churn and his palms sweat. 

It's not fair to think about. Peter is a kid that Tony feels responsible for and he has a wife, a baby, a life that has nothing to do with a poor kid from Queens. 

But there is this--

A hug on the battlefield. The haunted sorrow in his eyes, after he Snapped Thanos and his forces. 

A life he risked, on the chance he could save Peter. 

He doesn't let himself think about it. 

But he can't stop himself from hoping. 

 

~*~

 

They spend time every day by the lake, and taking long rambling walks while twilight settles. Every morning, Bucky runs along the dirt road through the forest that surrounds them, almost ten miles to the main road and back again. 

But for all the time they spend everywhere else--the place they're most often found is Tony's room. Peter settles there with his books and his computer and listens to Bucky read aloud, when his eyes ache from his own studies. He answers emails from Pepper and May, sometimes, and tries not to think about everyone he hasn't heard from since the Restoration. 

And it's at Tony's bedside that he looks at Bucky and says, "I want to tell their stories." 

Bucky nods and says, "Tell me how." 

 

~*~

 

He spends most of his time coding the program to process the endless stories pouring in, and working with Pepper to get it off the ground. And somewhere along the way, it becomes more than just the stories of those who died and came back. It becomes the stories of everyone Tony touched. He reads them, every night, while Bucky sits next to him and he knows that one day--one day it's going to be too much and Tony is going to wake up just to tell him to shut up, flushing in grumpy embarrassment. 

He can't wait. 

 

~*~

 

That isn't quite how it goes. When Tony wakes up, Peter is singing, soft and off key, and Bucky is asleep on the ground because he's a weirdo, and Tony doesn't actually move--it's just a flutter of eyelids that Peter, after over a month at his bedside, thinks he'd register even in his sleep. He looks up and tired, confused, beautiful brown eyes stare back and he smiles. 

Chokes back his relief and tears. 

"Welcome back, Mr. Stark." 

It earns him a tiny smile, before Tony is asleep again.

 

~*~

 

"You called me Tony," he whispers, a few days later. Peter smiles, softly. It's been a long few days and Tony has been asleep for most of it, waking and drifting off again. Rhodey is here, sleeping somewhere in the cabin, and Bucky is tucked in the corner of the room because this--this is when Tony will be dangerous. This is when Extremis will cause him to lash out, if it does. 

"Don't get used to it," he teases, and feeds Mr. Stark another ice chip. It melts, too quick, on his lip and Peter wipes the drop of water away. Tony's eyes track him as he sits back. 

"I like it," he says.

Peter's gut churns, because--he doesn't know how to respond to that. Doesn't know how to say he can't make that their normal because it's too close, too much, everything he wants and can't have. 

Instead he says, "Get out of that bed, and maybe I'll use it again." 

Tony's eyes brighten and his mouth tightens, and that--that is when Peter finally let's himself breath and the knot of fear loosens in his chest. 

He knows that look. It's the look Tony got, when Peter put himself in danger, the look he got, when someone kidnapped Peter junior year. The way he looked when Harry broke up with Peter the first time, and the look he got every time Steve Rogers came up. 

It was the look that said, come hell or high water, Tony was going to fix a problem. 

In all the time he'd known Tony, Peter can't remember a time he'd failed. He didn't think for a second that this would be the first time. 

 

~*~

 

He waits, until Rhodey is by Tony's bed and he can slip away and huddle in his room, a corner with the pillow to muffle the noise, and he cries. 

Finally, desperate and relieved, limbs shaking, he cries because Tony is going to  _ live _ . 

 

~*~

 

No one sleeps easy. 

Before Titan, when they were still doing the superhero/mentee thing, Tony said nightmares were a occupational hazard. But living in a cabin--just three of them--the nightmares were a constant companion, a fourth presence in the home, and he hated them. 

They haunted the nights--Bucky drifting into the kitchen to make warm vanilla milk and read. Peter shivering in his bed before he crept out and into Tony's room to web a nest in the corner where he could watch Tony while the older man slept. 

Tony didn't do much, when he had nightmares. Just lay in bed and listened to FRIDAY reading report after report after report of everything that happened after the Battle of the Avengers. 

On the nights when Peter crept into Tony's room and found the man awake, he'd listen to the AI's soothing Irish lilt, and eventually he'd fall asleep there. 

Once, Tony asks him about it. "Why do you like coming here, after the nightmares?" 

He doesn't answer at first, but then--he died with a thousand words on his tongue and came back and Tony almost died and the words stayed unsaid and he is  _ tired _ of biting them back.

"In my nightmares, you die," he says, softly, staring at Tony. 

"Pete," Tony breathes. He shrugs and blinks the tears stinging his eyes away. 

"When I can see you--I know it was just a dream. That you're here--the Snap didn't take you, the Battle didn't take you. You're still here, with me." 

"Kid," Tony chokes and he reaches for Peter. 

And Peter let's him. Takes his hand and let's Tony pull him close, crawls into the bed next to him and curls under his arm, careful, careful, careful, and he falls asleep there, and neither of them have nightmares. 

 

~*~

 

Two and a half months after the Battle--a month after Tony wakes up--Bucky says, "Extremis has done everything it can." 

Peter frowns. They're on the porch because Tony stopped putting up with being bed bound two weeks ago, and the porch is his favorite place. There are fireflies beginning to float lazy on the air, and Tony is tucked warm and secure against his side.

"But--"

"It was a long shot, that Extremis was going to save him," Bucky says, gently. "And it did--but it was never going to undo all the damage." 

Tony looks at his hands--the one twisted with Peter's, long elegant, fingers, calloused and scarred by years of work. And the one that is still burnt and shaky, that is mangled and barely functional. "I can't--I can't work, with my hands. Not like this," he says. 

He can't  _ build _ . He can't  _ create _ . 

"No. Not like this," Bucky says, gently. "But this is how far Extremis took you--and physical therapy can take you further." 

Tony stares at his hands, and tears splash on them, on his mangled fingers, and he nods. "Ok." 

"I'll help you," Bucky promises. 

"Thank you," he says, hoarsely. 

Buck smiles, and sits upright. "Don't thank me yet." 

 

~*~

 

The first time they do PT, Tony is sobbing in five minutes, and cursing Bucky in less than that. 

The fifth time, he makes it to seven minutes. 

The sixth time, he barely makes it to three. Each time, he screams and curses at Bucky. Peter rubs his shoulder, after, when Bucky leans into him and trembles, and he says, "You know he needs this." 

Bucky nods and closes his eyes. "I hate hurting him." 

They both do. 

 

~*~

 

Bucky is quiet. 

He listens, and he laughs sometimes, when Peter does something especially ridiculous, like the time he tripped off the dock and fell into the lake and Bucky laughed, loud and startled, enough that he shook a copse of birds from the trees. 

But he doesn't talk much. He sits in his corner and reads and he writes, and he watches. 

Sometimes, Peter wants to ask him. What he remembers from being dead. What he remembers from the long years before that. 

Where is Steve. 

Bucky's gaze is always so...empty...that when he thinks about it, when he let's the words gather weight and sit on the edge of his tongue--he always swallows them back. 

 

~*~

 

"I didn't expect you here." 

Peter doesn't move. He fell asleep on the bed, tucked in Tony's arms, and he can hear the birds outside and the creak of the cabin floor where Bucky shifts his weight. 

"He couldn't be here by himself." 

Tony's arm around him tightens, and Peter presses just a little closer, reassuring, and Tony says, softly, "Thank you. For looking out for him." 

Bucky is silent, and then, "Steve?" 

It's said gently. So gently it makes tears sting the corner of Peter's eyes and he barely breathes, waiting. 

"He don't need me anymore," Bucky says. "Gave Wilson the shield and got himself the life he always wanted." 

There's a silence, and then, "I don't know what to do, without him or Hydra. I've--I've never been alone before. Not until now." 

Tony shifts, the hand in Peter's hair leaving and he can feel Tony reaching for Bucky. 

"You still aren't, Buck," Tony promises. "You have us." 

 

~*~

 

"What was it like?" he asks, and Tony blinks at him. He's already looking at Peter, something that doesn't even strike him as odd, not anymore. Tony watches Peter. He can count on that, like he knows the sun will rise and the stars will fill up the sky. He doesn't question it, and he doesn't bother trying to parse out what the heavy, intense gaze means. 

He thinks he knows, and it's better to leave it unspoken because this cabin on the edge of America is not their home. 

There is a world, waiting. Waiting to snatch Tony back and demand more of him. 

There is a family, waiting. Impatient for their missing piece. A little girl who misses her father, a wife who deserves her husband. He closes his eyes, because sometimes--seeing that look in Tony's eyes  _ hurts _ . 

"While we were gone," Peter continues on, tilting his head to lean on Tony's shoulder, and pushing the porch swing into a gentle rock. 

"Quiet," he says. "It was so quiet. It wasn't just the people, you know. Half of every living thing--and it was so  _ quiet _ in the aftermath I thought I'd go mad, with it. And that was--that was after I decided I wasn't going to die." 

Peter flinches, and looks up, quick, eyes wide and scared. "The trip home almost killed me," Tony murmurs. "And then, Cap and the others--they killed Thanos but there was no undoing any of it. We didn't have the stones. We couldn't  _ fix _ it. And I wanted to die. I wanted to let the starvation and the infection and everything else take me because--" 

He cuts himself off, and Peter squeezes his hand. "Because?" 

"Because I missed you," Tony whispers, like a secret. "I didn't know how to be here, without you." 

He makes a noise, low and hurt and Tony's eyes are wide and wet and watching, and he burrows into Tony's side, careful, careful. Tony holds him close, and he doesn't know who is clinging to who, only that they are are together. 

 

~*~

 

Tony watches him. 

And he touches. 

Before--before Tony never was one much for touch, beyond a grasped shoulder or a hand up while they were sparring. He'd nudge Peter aside in the kitchen and scruff his hair when sending him to bed--but it was different. They sit on the dock, while Bucky fishes, and Tony plays with Peter's hair, combs his fingers through it, slow and sensual and Peter knows it's wrong, knows he should pull away, but Tony's hand--his good hand, his whole hand--is gentle in his hair, and the blackened hand is resting on his chest, where his heart pounds too fast. Tony tugs, once, fingers catching on a snarl, and Peter gasps, his head coming back, arching his neck, eyes fluttering closed. 

Tony's hand in his hair stills, and the one on his chest  _ clenches _ , and Peter has a moment to think,  _ shit _ , before he scrambling up and away and shouting about making dinner as he darts back to the house. 

He does make dinner. 

But first, he locks himself in his bathroom and takes his cock in his hand, and strokes himself fast and rough, the tug of Tony's hand in his hair and grip on his chest burning through him as he spills over his fingers. 

 

~*~

 

Morgan Stark is beautiful. She's dark haired and bright eyed and brilliant and Peter is charmed by her, helplessly. She sits in his lap, quiet, while Peter rocks them on the swing. Rhodey and Pepper are inside, talking to Tony with Helen Cho, and he wonders if this is the end. The day he will begin to lose Tony. 

"Daddy missed you," Morgan says, soft, like a secret. 

"Did he?" 

She nods, expression grave but her eyes sparkle, like she's telling him something she shouldn't. "Mama says Daddy would have burnt down the universe, to save you." 

Peter flushes, guilt and pleasure warring in his gut and this precious little girl squirming in his lap, impatient and twitchy the way her father is. "I'm sorry," he murmurs. 

Morgan's eyes narrow, find him and she stills. 

For a moment, she is all Pepper--poised and considering, weighing him. Then her smile breaks again, and it's bright and beautiful. "Why? Daddy loves you." 

She leans into him and whispers, "Daddy would do  _ anything _ for the people he loves." 

She slips down from his lap and taps on foot, imperiously. "I want to throw stones in the water." 

Peter blinks at her, at the sudden change. From secrets to stones in less than thirty seconds. He thinks even Tony would struggle to keep up with her. Still. He smiles, and stands. "Let's find you some, princess." 

 

~*~

He leaves when Morgan is tucked in the bed with Tony. Peter had slipped away when Tony started crying, holding his daughter for the first time in almost three months. They look like a family, curled together on that bed, Morgan nestled between Tony and Pepper, and Rhodey a few feet away. 

He couldn't stay for that. It felt wrong to be so hurt. 

Bucky is sitting on the bed, reading, while Peter stares at nothing, curled around a pillow, tears silently rolling down his cheeks. 

Pepper clears her throat. "Can I have a moment with Peter?" 

Bucky looks at him, a question in the tilt of his eyebrows, and Peter nods, scrubs his face as he sits up. "It's fine." 

Pepper is quiet as Bucky leaves, and then she smiles at Peter. "You've taken such good care of him. Of both of them." 

Peter shrugs. Looks away. "After everything he did, he deserves to be taken care of." 

"He does," she says, softly. "And he deserves to be happy." 

He swallows hard. 

"I have to take Morgan back to the city." 

Peter blinks at her, and she smiles, gently. "Tony--the world will always want something from Tony Stark. And the longer they believe he is dead--the more he can rest."

"You're leaving him," Peter blurts and Pepper shakes her head. 

"I'm--I love Tony. I will always love him--and he will always love me. But I love him enough to give him what he needs." 

Peter frowns at her, and she leans over, kisses his cheek briefly. She smells like linen and sunflowers and something sweet, like candy. 

"He needs you, right now. He has since you died. Take care of him--and when he needs me--don't hate him for that." 

Peter stares after her for a long time, after she slips away, and it's only when Bucky returns and he listens to them leaving, Morgan's high happy voice echoing through the cabin, that he answers the quietly poised, "What did she want?" 

"I think she gave me permission to be with Tony." 

 

~*~

 

"Do you miss him?" 

Bucky shakes his head. He doesn't ask who--doesn't need to. There's only ever been one  _ him _ in his life. 

"I miss--what we could have? I miss the boy I knew before the war and the life we had before the war--I miss  _ peace _ . But I never was going to have that with Steve. Not here. Not now. We aren't those people anymore." 

"You could have gone back with him," Tony says. He's watching Peter, cleaning the dishes and chattering to May and trying to keep himself from going to the boy. 

"I'm not that boy, anymore. Neither was Steve--but he was so damn sure he could be." 

Tony glances at him. "You're angry with him." 

Bucky shrugs. Shakes his head. "Not angry. I just--I understand why he did it. But I don't think he should have." 

"What are you going to do, without him?" 

"Sam wants me to help him." 

"Captain America and the Winter Soldier again, huh?" Tony hums. "But?" 

Bucky shrugs and looks at him, almost shy. "I'm tired. I am so tired of fighting and killing. I don't--I don't want to be that person, anymore. I don't want to do that. I just want to be quiet and live." 

Tony watches the boy. The one he sacrificed everything for, and can't step away from. 

"I understand that," he says, softly. 

 

~*~

 

The days get longer and longer, thick with heat and humidity, heavy twilights full of singing frogs and birds, and then, almost before he can reconcile, they're sliding toward fall, the days growing short, and the leaves changing. Six months slip away and Peter thinks--he could stay here forever, tucked away with his toes under Bucky's thigh and Tony's arm wrapped around his shoulders, holding me close. 

He works on the endless stories, and the website launches with Pepper's help and a mess of publicity in New York that doesn't touch him. May calls, tells him how proud of him she is and she asks, delicate and indirect, when he'll come home. 

He doesn't say that he is home. That a cabin on the edge of America, in the embrace of Tony, next to Bucky, is home. 

 

~*~

 

"Do you love him?" Peter asks, one night after Tony has fallen asleep. The PT session today left him shaking and exhausted, and Peter wonders if they're ever going to be whole again. Or if they're always going to be shattered pieces trying to put themselves back together. 

"Of course," Bucky says, startled. He looks at Peter. "But not like you do. I love you both--you're my family. But I don't--I'm not made for relationships, Peter. I never was. I loved Steve, too. And I could never have been with him, not like that." 

Peter tips his head. "But--the news reels--they always said you liked---" he fumbles, and stops, flushing and Bucky grins, and for a moment it's bright and there are no shadows in his eyes. 

"Fucking is easy, doll. It's the romance I don't do. I can't do. I love you both--but I don't think I can love anyone the way you love him." 

Peter nods, and Bucky musses his hair as he walks by. "Don't worry about me, little spider. I'm happy." 

Peter catches his wrist, squeezes and Bucky pauses, startled. "Promise?" 

Surprise and adoration cascade through his eyes, and he softens. "обещай, паук." 

 

~*~

 

Ironman died. 

That's what the world knows. 

The Battle of the Avengers changed everything, rewrote the Decimation, and destroyed the Compound and in the end, killed Thanos and his mass of alien invaders and the cost was staggeringly high--but the one that was most remembered was Tony Stark. Who put on a gauntlet made for a god to wield a power that created the cosmos and risked his life to rewrite the universe into existence. 

To bring back a boy with big eyes and chestnut curls and a heart so big it  _ hurt _ to think about--but the world doesn't know that part of the story. 

They don't know this part either--

Extremis saved his life, and it took time, time and privacy and a cabin on the edge of America and a boy who refused to leave his side, to put him back together, but Tony Stark survived. 

Tony Stark stares at his boy, the one he was so willing to die for, smiling sleepily over his coffee, and he thinks--it was worth it. 

For this boy. 

It was worth it. 

"We can undo it. Bring Ironman back." Rhodey murmurs to him and Tony looks at the suit, the one that is so much a part of him. 

He looks at his hand, the right hand that is still weak and scarred, that will never be whole and he looks at  _ Peter _ . 

Shakes his head. 

Ironman died on that battlefield. 

Tony Stark doesn't have to. 

 

~*~

 

Tony goes into the workshop eight months after the Battle, six months after he leaves his bed for the first time. Peter is at his side, and Extremis winds through him, waking up the room and the bots before he can speak. 

His hand might never be whole, but his mind is sharper than it ever was. 

He looks at Peter, and says, because here, in the workshop where he has always been the most comfortable, he finally thinks he  _ can _ say it, "You don't have to stay with me." 

Peter looks at him, and his eyes are bright and clear and so beautiful it makes his breath catch. 

"Do you want me to go?" 

Tony is shaking his head before he can finish the question, and his voice is too raw, too honest when he says, "Never." 

Peter smiles and draws him deeper into the room. "What are we working on?" 

 

~*~

 

It feels good, being back at work. Even if he has to lean over Peter, his voice low and steady as he tells him what to do. Peter's hands are strong and steady and capable, and Tony grits his teeth against the  _ want _ that never seems to go away, and only gets worse the longer they are together. 

Sometimes, Peter slips and hurts himself and he shrugs it off, dismisses it like his blood spilling is nothing to worry about, and Tony's heart pounds, pounds, pounds, and his fingers tremble as he cleans Peter's hands and bandages them and holds them like he's precious and wishes he could explain to the boy--he is. 

He is. 

He is. 

 

~*~

 

Tony is a little startled to find Peter sitting on his bed. His hands are bandage free and his eyes are bright and warm as he watches Tony. The cabin is quiet, and he has a moment to wonder if Peter planned this, before Peter shifts and all thought vanishes. 

He's in an oversized t shirt that Tony recognizes as his own. 

"You need to understand something, Tony," he murmurs and that--that's never going to not get to him. Tony, coming from Peter is almost indecent and so fucking perfect, everything he wanted for over five  _ years _ . "I am exactly where I want to be. I'm not here because you saved my life, or because you were my mentor a lifetime ago, or any other reason you've got in your head. I'm here? Because I want to be here. I'm with you because I  _ want _ to be with you." 

He doesn't say anything else, but Tony is suddenly close enough to touch and he wonders if that was himself or Extremis before he decides it doesn't matter. 

"Pete," he whispers. 

"I want this," Peter murmurs, and draws him into a kiss that's shockingly chaste. 

 

~*~

 

It's gentle. He isn't sure why that shocks him. Peter has always been gentle with him, considerate and kind. It does shock him, though, and he bites his lip to keep from sobbing when Peter slowly rides him, when he kisses him, too deep to be anything but dirty, but so careful it's almost reverent, and his hands cling, but they never tip past desperate into hard. It's gentle and possessive but never claiming, and it feels like a gift, and when Peter comes, spilling across his belly with a cry, that feels like a gift too. 

 

~*~

 

There is a cabin, near the edge of America, right up on the Canadian border. In the summer, the forest is bright and green and lush for miles. In the winter, it's snow bound and the lake freezes and Peter goes out on it, dances endless circles on skates while Tony watches from the porch, hands clasped around a cup of hot chocolate. 

There are three suits, boxed up and hidden in the attic--one red and gold, one blue and red, and one black with too many knives and guns for one person to carry. They gather dust, never quite forgotten but happily left behind. Sometimes--sometimes Peter leaves, goes with Bucky to the city and spends a month with May, leave room for Pepper and Morgan to come home. 

He visits the memorials for a fallen legend, and he listens to the people who pour out their stories on a archive of survival he coded. 

He hugs the friends that still remain and Bucky shows him the graves of the ones they lost. 

And then he goes home. 

To the cabin on the edge of America and the man who draws him like a star. The world still mourns Ironman, and he thinks--one day they'll go back. 

One day, he'll tire of these shadows, step out of them, back into the light. 

But for now--for now there is a strong hand on his hip in the workshop, guiding him, and a sassy smile across from him in their kitchen, and a warm body curled around his in their bed. 

The world can mourn their legend, he thinks, the snow swirling down as he leans into Tony's greedy, welcoming kiss. 

He'll keep the man. 

He is, impossibly, happy. 

  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
